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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24128626">dancing in a world alone</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ptrprkrs/pseuds/ptrprkrs'>ptrprkrs</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>rina week 2020 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Fluff, Homecoming, Slow Dancing, rina nation how we doing?, rina week 2020, rinaweek2020</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 03:40:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,739</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24128626</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ptrprkrs/pseuds/ptrprkrs</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>As far as plans go, Gina was not expecting to spend the night of the Homecoming dance in the parking lot of a 24 hour fast food restaurant with a boy she hardly knows slow dancing to an overly cheesy love song, but she wasn’t hating it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ricky Bowen/Gina Porter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>rina week 2020 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1742248</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>43</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>dancing in a world alone</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>everybody say thank you to the rina book club for putting this together i am so excited!! here’s my contribution for day 1 a rewrite of the famous hoco scene lmk what you think!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In Gina’s fantasy, life is a movie. Or a dance. Or story. And Gina is the metaphorical director, choreographer and writer. She calls the shots. She writes the script and everything goes exactly as planned.</p><p> </p><p>This may be because of how unpredicatable her life has been and being uprooted at every place she sets foot in has left her with a desire to have things hapen how she wants them to, but whatever. She’s not a psychologist.</p><p> </p><p>The point is Gina likes to be in control and lately, things have been kind of off-script.</p><p> </p><p>She can’t say she had a fully fleshed out plan for how the night was supposed to go, but she did know it was not supposed to end with her ditching her date after dumping punch all over him or getting a ride from Ricky Bowen in his ugly orange buggy.</p><p> </p><p>They don’t speak anything to each other when they get in, save for the single “turn left when you leave the school” Gina says. Ricky merely hums in response.</p><p> </p><p>She’s not off put by silence. In fact, she welcomes it. Gives her time to think about her new plan of action, rework the script a little bit. Get her story back on track. So, please, give her all the Silent Ricky in the world.</p><p> </p><p>“Uh, where are we going?” Gina asks, distrubing the thick silence that had settled over them, once she noticed he had ignored her directions and continued driving straight. “I said to turn left.”</p><p> </p><p>Ricky simply shrugs. “I’m hungry.” He looks over at her and flashes her a cheeky grin. She huffs, crossing her arms across her chest and stares straight ahead in annoyance. Another wrench in her plans. She’s starting to think the world has it out for her. “You can’t tell me you’re not hungry either; you barely ate anything at the dance.”</p><p> </p><p>She looks at him skeptically. “You watching me now?”</p><p> </p><p>“Well, I mean you do really command attention when you’re throwing punch in the face of the most popular guy at school.”</p><p> </p><p>Gina snorts involuntarily. “EJ’s the most popular guy ar school?”</p><p> </p><p>“He’s the captain of the waterpolo team,” Ricky says as if that should explain things.</p><p> </p><p>It doesn’t. It makes even less to her and she finds the whole situation amusing. “Waterpolo? Really?”</p><p> </p><p>“What’s wrong with waterpolo?” he asks teasingly, a smile playing at his lips.</p><p> </p><p>“Can you name <em>one</em> rule of waterpolo?” She raises her eyebrow at him. He opens and closes his mouth dumbly and Gina smirks. “That’s what I thought.”</p><p> </p><p>He rolls his eyes good naturedly. “Okay, so maybe the waterpolo thing was a bad reason.”</p><p> </p><p>“Ya think?” she teases. Ricky’s smiling at her and it causes a weird feeling in her chest. Not bad, just…weird. Gina doesn’t know how to plan for it.</p><p> </p><p>“Well, he has also been the lead in every show since basically forever.”</p><p> </p><p>Her eyebrows furrow together. “Since when is musical theatre a measurement of popularity?”</p><p> </p><p>“This <em>is</em> East High,” he says with a wink. Gina rolls her eyes and playfully tells him to shut up and drive.</p><p> </p><p>Ricky orders them burgers, fries and one milkshake to share because <em>I’m not made of money, Porter</em>.</p><p> </p><p>He parks the car and climbs out with his food and the milkshake and goes to sit on the hood. Gina watches him skeptically from the passenger seat, mainly because she thought they were sharing that milkshake, but also because she isn’t sure if she was expected to follow him.</p><p> </p><p>Ricky looks back at her through the windshield and asks, “You coming?”</p><p> </p><p>Looks like she was.</p><p> </p><p>When she’s seated as comfortably as she can be in the dress her mother insisted she wear, Gina, asks (not necessarily out of curiosity, but because she discovered in the car that Talking Ricky was just as enjoyable as Silent Ricky, if not more but you didn’t hear that from her),“Do most dances end in the parking lot of a 24 hour fast-food restaurant?” She takes a bite of her burger.</p><p> </p><p>“I wouldn’t think so. The last dance I went to ended up with me and Red drinking slushies on the floor of a convinience store.” Gina must be looking at him funny, because he waves her off as if to say “<em>long story</em>”. “What about you?” He nudges her shoulder.</p><p> </p><p>“Hmm?”</p><p> </p><p>“What were your school dances like?”</p><p> </p><p>She shrugs non-commitally. “I don’t know. Never been.” It’s true. She hadn’t stuck around in a place long enough to go to one, let alone be asked.</p><p> </p><p>“Wait. So this was your first ever school dance?” Ricky asks genuinely shocked.</p><p> </p><p>“Did you use your powers of deduction to figure that out? Yeah this was my first one. Definitely one for the history books, I’ll tell ya.”</p><p> </p><p>Ricky’s quiet for a moment, finding something very interesting in the road below him. Then, he’s jumping off the top of the car and running around it to the driver’s side. He opens up the door and does something that Gina can’t really tell from how she’s sitting. When he comes back, his phone is in his hand and the <em>Cha Cha Slide</em> is playing.</p><p> </p><p>“Ricky, what are—?”</p><p> </p><p>“Welcome to your first ever middle school dance!” he exclaims, a large smile on his face, holding his arms out dramatically.</p><p> </p><p>“Middle school?”</p><p> </p><p>He nods enthusiastically. “Middle school dances are a rite of passage, Gina. High school? Eh, not so much.”</p><p> </p><p>“Every teen movie ever would beg to differ.”</p><p> </p><p>“Every teen movie ever hasn't experienced the cultural reset that are Ricky Bowen Impromptu Middle School Dances.”</p><p> </p><p>The song changes to a fast-paced, upbeat song that stirs something in a far corner of Gina’s mind. Then there it is. T-Pain’s voice rings loudly from the speakers in Ricky’s car as he sings the famous chorus <em>Low</em>.</p><p> </p><p>A shit-eating grin made its way across Ricky’s face. Gina lets out a surprised laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all. “There is <em>no</em> way they play this song at middle school dances.”</p><p> </p><p>Ricky shrugs, smile still dancing on his face. “Maybe not anymore ‘cause I doubt kids nowadays know the <em>masterpiece</em> that is Flo Rida’s 2007 hit single.”</p><p> </p><p>“Children are tasteless.”</p><p> </p><p>“The worst.” And her chest is doing that weird thing again at the sound of Ricky’s laugh and she finds she doesn’t mind it all that much.</p><p> </p><p>She takes another bite of her food as Ricky walks and stands in front of her with his hand held out.</p><p> </p><p>“May I have this dance?”</p><p> </p><p>Now this <em>had</em> to be a joke. Gina was going to have a stern conversation with the screenwriter because <em>seriously</em> who came <em>up</em> with this stuff?</p><p> </p><p>She rolls her eyes at his dramatics and puts her hand in his. “Why of course you may.”</p><p> </p><p>Ricky helps her down from the car and tells her how in sixth grade, Big Red and him created a dance routine to the song. She quirks an eyebrow at this. “Really?”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh, yeah,” he nods seriously, “we have to do it now.”</p><p> </p><p>“We do?”</p><p> </p><p>“The Ricky Bowen Impromptu Middle School Dance experience wouldn’t be complete without it.”</p><p> </p><p>She smiles widely at him. “Well, looks like you’ll have to teach me.”</p><p> </p><p>“Okay so we start with a little shimmey, right…”</p><p> </p><p>And Ricky ends up tripping multiple times, almost nearly taking Gina down with him once, and they’re laughing hysterically because well, there’s something wonderful about dancing in an empty parking lot with someone you weren’t even friends with just an hour ago.</p><p> </p><p>The song changes again and the tell-tale guitar strums of <em>Thinking Out Loud</em> echo throughout the empty parking lot.</p><p> </p><p>“Ah, there it is!” Ricky cheers.</p><p> </p><p>Gina stops mid-dance move and frowns. “There <em>what</em> it is?”</p><p> </p><p>“Why, the obligatory awkward slow dance, of course,” he states matter-of-factly and Gina rolls her eyes.</p><p> </p><p>Ricky wasn’t lying when he said it would be awkward. Ricky’s hand is placed precariously on her lower back, the other gently held in one of hers. Her heart is pounding in her chest and with how close they are, she’s sure Ricky can feel it.</p><p> </p><p>Something in the air shifts then. It’s barely noticeable, but Gina’s been paying close attention to everything since she got into the car with Ricky. She can’t explain it, but the atmosphere around them seems heavier. <em>God, his hands were soft</em>.</p><p> </p><p>They were barely even dancing anymore; just swaying in spot slightly. That weird feeling is back again and Gina sighs softly and rests her head on Ricky’s chest. It was nice.</p><p> </p><p>Someone better put her back in the writer’s room because this was getting ridiculous.</p><p> </p><p>As far as plans go, Gins was not expecting to spend the night of the Homecoming dance in the parking lot of a 24 hour fast food restaurant with a boy she hardly knows slow dancing to an overly cheesy love song, but she wasn’t hating it.</p><p> </p><p>They get chased away eventually; when <em>Despacito</em> comes on, one of the employees threatens to call the cops on them if they don’t shut up and leave.</p><p> </p><p>They’re sitting parked outside her house, the car filled to brim with the sounds of their laughter and them swapping crazy school stories they had heard, with Gina winning after telling Ricky how there was this one girl in her old elementary school who was so convinced she was a horse, that she got in trouble after crawling through the hallways on her hands and knees and kicking people with her legs. She also neighed at their principal.</p><p> </p><p>Then the lights of the front porch are flickering and Gina takes it as her cue to leave.</p><p> </p><p>And Gina can end the story here, she thinks, with Ricky looking at her softly, like he wants to say something. Anything, just to keep her in the car longer. The universe must feel bad about how it has treated her and is giving her an out. A way to set the movie that is her life back on track. She doesn’t take it. No, instead she kisses Ricky’s cheek; completely unscripted, totally improvised with no preparation whatsoever, but she does it anyway.</p><p> </p><p>(This is a lie. Gina has definitely been thinking about kissing Ricky since she danced with him, but it’s Gina’s story and she can pretend all she wants, thank you very much.)</p><p> </p><p>Seeing the look on his face after, all wide eyed and flustered, yeah, Gina likes this ending way better.</p>
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